Would you live in a housing estate made only for middle class people?

[Melvinaa]

/afforded only by those with professional salaries?

I’ve always lived in areas where poor and rich live cheek by jowl. But I’m considering move to a housing estate which is designed/afforded only by professional people. So the overall demographics are going to be very middle class because rents range from £2000-£5000

I’m not sure I’ll feel comfortable knowing it’s exclusionary

I live on a small development of 50ish houses, all 5 plus bedrooms, so my design yes I do live on a similar type of place and in all honesty, I absolutely love it. It helps that we all moved in within about 9 months of each other so there's a fab sense of community.

Rich doesn’t always = middle class though? Or am I missing something?

How can they know everyone would be a progressional? What's the definition of that. Could say a lottery winner rent one if they didn't have a profession or is there some sort of vetting procedure?

I live on what I thought was a posh neighbourhood. Nobody bloody speaks, I've got a friend who's a single mum (simply because her husband was a cheat) and rather than support her they look down their noses at her, I used to love the "rage against the neighbourhood people" who's buy a sheep or grow a potato patch on the front lawn to piss one off. They didn't complain when they hot a bag of veg.
However that was growing up on that estate. Fast forward a few years & they stuck a council estate in the middle where the average resident has trakkie bottoms & stinks of weed. House prices will take a hit.

By exclusionary do you mean it specifies what jobs these people must have to live there?

We recently moved into a beautiful estate, lovely houses, finally our forever home. However judging by the absolute shitty neighbours a few doors down they didn’t get the memo it was to be a nice place. We came from a really rough area and people always commented on our specific street (same town). 5 years there never saw a bit of trouble. 6 months here and the family from hell have had several bust ups 🤯

Seriously what you describe is one thing but how is that enforced?! Who decides? I’m pretty sure it will have a mix of people living there. I wouldn’t care less as long as I loved the house/area.

no

Indeed.
Only affordable by the middle classes is a bonkers concept, op 🤔

I sort of think it would be like the stepford wives type environment. 😄

There might be a rich WC person who lives there though. Then what would you do?

To live on the estate you have to apply and pass background checks - they only really let people in who are lawyers, dentists, professors, etc

I’d hate that. My best friend moved to what was supposed to be a similar development, it was to be a new small village with exclusive GP, dentist, community hall, school etc etc. I remember going to visit her not long after she moved in and it was like something out of Stepford Wives. 3 years later a new developer built houses near them and they had the audacity to also build a certain amount of homes that were to be social housing. The outcry on social media was disgusting. I wouldn’t want to live next to people who were so shallow tbh.

Do people in these professions generally rent, though?

A housing estate where everyone rents??? Why can't people buy these houses

Oh wow! I'd be happy amongst professionals - but maybe not if they'd sought out that sort of wankery.

I imagine they'd be a bit try hard, socially aspirational and have a social chip on their shoulder.

It’s in London - so lots of people don’t buy for a variety of reasons

I don't like new build to start with. Our cul de sac is expensive but quite a mix age wise because we have six houses and four bungalows. Built in the late sixties by a renowned architect they're all different. The thing that they have in common are large rooms which we like. Lovely mature gardens.

I honestly wouldn't want to be socially engineered. They did build a gated community quite near us but adjacent to a downtrodden area. Those homes were seen as a challenge by bored teenagers. That caused some issues.

Plenty of non professional/ middle class people in London pay rents of £2k plus. I’m in a not massively salubrious area of Z3 and there are plenty of 2 bed flats with that sort of rent.

Yes, the rent certainly won't keep the plebs out
Who actually owns the estate and does the vetting, op?

Wow, I had no idea that places like this existed! Fascinating.

Personally, I don't think I'd like this. It all sounds a bit homogenous and I'd question the motivations behind such a choice.

I can really understand the desire to live in a safe, calm neighbourhood where people are generally considerate of one another, and perhaps some people might consider to be the best way of trying to avoid the opposite. I'm not sure it would work out like that in reality.

My fantasy would be to live in a neighbourhood where everybody signed up to a kind of mutual good neighbours code. I couldn't give a shit whether my fellow residents were rich or poor, so long as everyone acted respectfully and considerately towards one another. But I know that would be completely unworkable in practice!

Hopefully they do some kind of formal
test too - to make sure everyone is on the same page. Multiple choice answers and scored accordingly something like the following :

Q1 : Where should you get your online shopping from ?
A: Waitrose
B: M+S from Ocado
C: Abel and Cole

Q2 : Acceptable times for the above deliveries are ?
A: 6-7 am
B: 10-11 pm
C: 10-11 am

Q3 : What is most acceptable to hang outside your home ?
A: Your washing
B: A plastic topiary ball
C: A hand crafted hanging basket that you made step by step via video call with Alan titchmarsh

Etc etc

I know a professor and a Dr neither of them would be able to afford or choose to pay£5k a month rent.

This sounds like an episode of Frasier where the residents committee have to get the new couple wanting to buy in the building.
I'm my mind that sort of estate would smell like Jo Malone candles and naice ham and the sounds would be various Tarquins on trampolines and the almost silent white noise of a Tesla

I’d miss the aristos, much the best for the inside gossip on the Royals and the City.

Surely that is the case for many many (most?) people who buy their homes - living next to people on similar incomes? All the houses near me are 4 or 5 bedrooms and cost a similar amount so pretty much everyone has a salary above a certain level. It's why some schools are 6% pupil premium and some are 66%. I'd have thought in towns, more so than cities, what you describe is largely inevitable.